This is an icky romance based on the notion that Earth is about to be hit by a large asteroid which will extinguish all mankind in three weeks’ time.

Lars Von Trier used the conceit successfully to evoke both deepening pain and poetry in Melancholia, but Lorene Scafaria’s film nods frantically to any number of genres – the rom-com, the road trip, the apocalypse movie – and succeeds in none.

Steve Carell plays an insurance salesman called Dodge, whose wife Nancy leaves him the moment the death sentence on Earth is pronounced. Nobody gets dumped quite like Carell – he’s cinema’s favourite sexual reject - and he cruises expertly on a mixture of rage and regretful acceptance before bumping into his kooky young English neighbour Penny (Keira Knightley). She is in the throes of breaking up with her freeloading boyfriend.

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Penny is, I’m afraid, a character in the irritating tradition of the “manic pixie dream-girl” type, first skewered by the American critic Nathan Rabin: she’s quirky, eccentric, impulsive, emotional and has a couple of childishly cute tics that can also serve as handy plot-handles. (In this case, when Penny falls asleep you can’t wake her up, which at one point enables Carell to load her into a tiny plane piloted by Martin Sheen without her even noticing. Don’t ask.)

In the course of fleeing rioters, and breaking into gleaming houses with incredibly well-stocked fridges, Dodge and Penny fall in love. This doesn’t involve much sex – to be fair, I suppose the end of the world might indeed put a dampener on one’s libido, rather like being offered that last slap-up meal on Death Row – but it does trigger a lot of tenderly soupy adoration, with Penny frequently making her sweet-but-pained, bunny nose-crinkle face.

I don’t mean to be unkind but, really, the asteroid couldn’t land soon enough.